FAIRWELL FRIDAY

Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarek has agreed to step down today, Friday, February 11th. The Vice President made the announcement in what Randy Rhodes calls a 28 second statement. It took thirty years to build the dictatorship and only 28 seconds to dissolve it. Naturally the crowds are elated. But I have a few questions. What is the Army's role in all of this? How come the people instinctively trust the Army so that they are even bold enough to climb on their tanks. Now that power has been handed to the Army what will they do with it? Are they really going to have an election in sixty days like they are talking about? Or is there some other secret agreement between the Army and the protesters that somehow power will be turned over to some yet unknown entity. I'm sure people like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh aren't happy about the power transfar because anything Obama is for, they are against. After all Rush cheered when Chicago lost the Olympics. Some people have said that the Moslem Brotherhood and the Tea Party here at home are similar. Both talk about violence and even espouse it, yet they claim not to actually be guilty of it themselves. Both groups say they want to work within the system. It's funny how in other places in Europe the people will directly picket corporations whom they claim to be exploitive. But we don't do that here. Here we have people like Obama who would rather sell out to them. With friends like that who needs enemies?

Thom Hartman continues to make it one of the planks in his platform that the US Supreme Court has no legitimate power to declare a law of congress Unconstitutional. He says none of the Federalist Papers spoke of this but rather said that all three branches would be co equal. The US Constitution spells out specific powers of the Supreme Court including it being the ultimate court of last resort. But nowhere in all these enumerated power does it say they have the ability to just throw out laws, rather than interperet what they mean. Of course George Bush believed in a unitary executive and the power to make "signing statements" qualifying how the laws he signed would be enforced. This is wrong, too. According to Hartman, the remedy for a bad law of congress is to vote that congress out and put in a new one. Rotsa Ruck with that with today's corporate money driven campaigns. Of course in theory voting out the legeslature would remedy the problem. All of these Supreme Court justices such as Thomas and Sculia who have friends up to their asses in political involvement, sometimes very specific involvement such as how to overturn Obama's health care plan. Of course you know that Congress has the power to impeach justices. Their life terms thus aren't really life because it says, "during good behavior". And you continue to hear talk jocks saying the tea party is divided. I believe this is a myth and always has been. But now Randy Rhodes said if she were on the radio in April of 2009 she would have praised the tea party for "finally getting it". Roomer has it now some of them are calling Dick Chaney a war criminal. Maybe that was just some bad joke that got circulated. It's kind of a toss up to say which nation has a better shot at liberty now, The USA or Egypt. People have gotten optimistic before. KTLK was doing those ads in 2006 or so, "now our opinion has become main stream". The reactionary forces of repression seem to be getting stronger all over the world. People had high hope for Russia twenty years ago. How's that working out for them now? They say governments in Europe are making a full scale march to the right because of economic considerations. The capitalism of today is far from anything that Adam Smith envisioned. The far right say that Obama really wants to "wreck the economy" so he can institute some totalitarian system. Unfortunately this notion is not so easily disproved as one would suppose at first glance.